PERMANENT INCOME OF PAKISTAN

Date: 10/06/2017

PAKISTAN'S INCOME

I remember discussing Partition with a Muslim class fellow at DAV High School in Multan. It was autumn 1946.

Even as teenagers we were smart in politics since the times were exciting. The British were about to leave and the Muslims were up to mischief to create their own sovereign Pakistan. The topic of discussion in England is the weather. Ours in those days was the impending "Partition"!

I said to Tasaddaq Hussain, my class fellow, "You Muslims are lazy and a lot poorer than the Hindus and the Sikhs. You have never studied anything except the Koran nor learnt anything except violence & terrorism. Your Pakistan will soon be starving."

He replied, "O no, we won't! We shall have TWO cash yielding "cows" that will be our permanent source of income."

He talked about Saudi Arabia where the poor bedouins lived on goat milk and dates. Yet millions of Muslims come for Hajj every year and were leaving vast amounts of money behind. (That was the time when oil had not yet been discovered and the Arabs were extremely poor).

"So," he continued, "we shall have the historic temples and gurdwaras, including the birth place of Guru Nanak Dev, to which Hindu and Sikh pilgrims will keep on coming till eternity and enrich our country with their donations and purchases. In addition, we shall have the rich wheat fields of Lyallpur that are feeding the whole of Hindusthan."

Decades later I reflect, how stupid of our leaders to readily agree to give all that TERRITORY with our holy places and the rich “golden” wheat fields to the lazy Muslims to establish Pakistan!

But sadly, this pain is not shared by the Hindus living in other States in Bharat, like Gujarat, Bihar and Kerala, that did not get “partitioned” in bloodshed.

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10 June 2017

PS: Before the idea of Pakistan spread, NONE tried to foresee the calamity that was to break up our ancient Hindusthan into three fragments in August 1947. And we are still living with that absurdity- that naked aggression!